Here's what makes Voyage Financial Group so successful, and how advisors can apply a similar strategy to their own business to carve out a highly profitable niche for themselves, and ultimately build a highly respected brand within their area of expertise:

Voyage very cleverly followed what renowned business gurus W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne call a "Blue Ocean strategy"—finding an area of opportunity that other advisors were ignoring instead of competing in the "red ocean" where everyone is fighting for business (and many wind up up being eaten alive).
They recognized that middle-income earners were desperate for financial guidance, and represented an untapped market because most advisors set their sights on high-net-worth individuals. They also recognized that a middle-income worker with a generous pension can become a very attractive client upon retirement and that if they invested the time to build trust with these employees, there would be a strong return in the long term. Lastly, Tom and Mike had learned that middle-income workers were generally very loyal and that once you secured them as clients, provided you took good care of them, you would have a client for life—something that is absolutely critical to long-term success in financial planning.

The lesson from this strategy is to find an area of the market that others are ignoring, and then study the economics of that area to determine if it is indeed a viable business strategy. When you consider that competition will be minimal, you may discover that there's actually more financial opportunity — not to mention more satisfaction from a social mission perspective — in these opportunities than the ones most other advisors are fighting over.

Instant Insights /

The successful retirement plan advisor, part five

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